Posted on 03/19/2017 7:58:55 AM PDT by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
My wife called to tell me she was stuck in traffic not far from our home. When she eventually discovered the cause of the highly unusual Saturday midafternoon backup, her heart was filled with sadness.
For it was a fatal accident involving a motorcycle and an SUV.
The biker was traveling west at “a high rate of speed.,” according to a police report. The Nissan SUV was traveling east. When the SUV turned left, the bike collided with the larger vehicle sending its rider flying through the SUV’s windshield like a projectile.
The 28-year-old biker was killed. The 51-year-old husband and 40-year-old wife in the front seat of the SUV sustained fatal injuries. Their 10-year-old daughter and 19-month-old son, riding in the back seat, miraculously survived the wreck, never to see their parents alive again.
My wife mourned for the orphaned children. I couldn’t help being angry at the dead motorcyclist for being so wreckless not only with his own life, but with the lives of his victims, who, it turnes out, were active members of their Baptist church, where the husband was a youth pastor and his wife a youth advisor who also taught Sunday school.
A few mornings after the tragedy, the Holy Spirit put it on both my heart and my wife’s heart to pray for all those involved. The orphaned children. Their deceased mother and father. The reckless biker. And the grieving families and friends of all.
It stayed on our hearts for some reason until God arranged a divine appointment this past Friday.
We had stopped by our neighborhood bank to take care of a bit of business. When we returned to our vehicle a half-hour or so later, it wouldn’t start for some reason. Instead of driving home directly from the bank, as originally planned, we decided to wait for roadside service at a nearby watering hole.
The place was teeming. There was the usual Friday evening dinner crowd. In the bar area there were St. Patrick’s Day revelers clad in green. And there was another group, wearing black tee shirts, marking some occasion or another.
As it turns out, they were the family and friends of the dead biker, whom they had laid to rest that day. He was a regular at the watering hole. He left behind his wife of two years and their 11-month old daughter.
My wife and I met the biker’s widow, Courtney, who was beautiful from the inside out. Holding back tears, she asked us to pray for her and pray especially for her daughter, whose father will never see her graduate high school or college, never see her marry the love of her life, never see her have children of her own.
The widow described her husband, a lineman, as a “friendly, outgoing person.” He loved his wife very much. And he doted on his baby daughter.
My wife and I were filled with overwhelming compassion for Courtney and grateful for the opportunity to glorify God by showing the young widow loving-kindness.
I repented the anger I had for her deceased husband for his role in the fatal accident. He did not intend to take the lives of his victims. And he paid the forfeit for his recklessness.
I could only imagine how Courtney felt. It was painful enough, no doubt, that she lost her husband, who made a tragic mistake that cost him his life. But she also has to live with the knowledge, the sorrow, the undeserved ignominy that her husband killed two people and left two children parentless.
Yet, those of us who are Christ followers take comfort from the Psalm that promises: “The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
My wife and I embraced the biker’s widow and returned to our car to wait for the arrival of road side assistance. On a whim, I put the key in the ignition and turned it. The car started.
We drove off spirit-filled, praising the Lord for what we believed to be a truly divine appointment.
Those kinds of motorcyclists are everywhere.
I constantly see people being upbraided for not being careful around motorcycles, but RARELY if ever, see those same motorcyclists being told to ride more responsibly. It goes both ways. If the motorcyclists want people to be careful then they should be too.
If they want car drivers to respect them, they they need to respect car drivers as well.
No clue who's really at fault here. Probably both could have done better.
Although if the motorcyclists were weaving in and out of traffic and riding between lines of cars and shot out suddenly, there's no way a car driver could see them until too late. And I have see motorcyclists riding on the dashed lines in between cars ON THE INTERSTATE just to squeeze between two cars who are not going fast enough for him at 70 MPH.
I had a motorcycle once and enjoyed riding it a lot but gave it up after some old greezer at a stop light next to me GLARED at me as if I were a Hell’s angle (all 105 pounds of me in a t-shirt and jeans) and when the light changed deliberately pulled over towards me to run me off the road.
I could see it coming though, from the way he was staring at me. I knew he was going to pull something stupic so I backed off.
But that was enough for me.
I was too young to die or worse at the hands of an idiot.
>>>Why would you be mad at the motorcyclist?
Unless I’m reading it wrong it looks as if the suv turned into his path<<<
The Motorcyclist was speeding. The SUV would have been able to turn safely if the Motorcyclist wasn’t driving like a lunatic. From the Article “The biker was traveling west at “a high rate of speed.,” according to a police report”.
A few Years ago our Nephew was killed instantly on his Motorcycle when a Woman made a Left Turn in front of him at a Traffic Signal.
He WAS NOT speeding and she WAS NOT paying attention. She was not punished in any way. She had minimum Car Insurance and she didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it through, or so we were told.
Our Nephew was a Marine who survived two Tours in Afghanistan. He got out of the Service, completed his College Education and had just started a great Job.
That being said, we have all made stupid decisions in Life and most of us got away with them unscathed. It’s a shame that the Motorcyclist’s “mistake” caused so much damage.
The word you were looking for is 'reckless'. The motorcyclist was most certainly not 'wreckless' or you wouldn't have had a story to write.
Almost bad enough to get you a job with a major newspaper.
An old saying I heard along time ago goes: “life is what happens in between making plans”
I too have done things that I now realize were pretty stupid.
I drive a car, and keep that in mind...assume you aren’t seen. Seems healthier, to me...
Stanford University has long used the, er, spare parts of those young men, dubbed "donor-cyles." Who wouldn't want the heart, lungs, etc., of a 19-year-old for a transplant?
Some young men think that they are invulnerable and invincible. They seem to think with their genitalia, not unlike women that age who think with their hair. MOST grow up, thank goodness.
Just TOO sad.
MANY prayers for the young man, his family, relatives and friends.
My husband drove his motorcycles and "drivers mostly don't see you" was ABSOLUTELY correct.
I'm not so sure about the INTENT to hit motorcyclists.
where the husband was a youth pastor and his wife a youth advisor who also taught Sunday school.
_________________-
Every youth pastor’s wife that I have known in the past twenty years has died of some horrible thing. Accidents, nasty cancers...childbirth, you name it.
It must be a vocational requirement.
To be a sermon example.
And this is why the punishment for driving with depraved indifference should be twenty strokes with a bull whip. For the first offense.
Obviously not literally true, I throw that in for a laugh line. Although it IS true that some of the "cagers" have animosity toward two-wheelers.
**Their 10-year-old daughter and 19-month-old son, riding in the back seat, miraculously survived the wreck, never to see their parents alive again. **
I’m wondering who adopted the 10 year old and 19-month old.
Depends on just how fast he was going, or how quickly he may have accelerated. I knew two kids in school who were killed riding a motorcycle in this same situation.
The operator of the motorcycle gunned it, and accelerated quickly to well over 100 mph in a very short timeframe. According to witnesses, the driver of the station wagon had initiated the turn well before the bike would have made the intersection at legal speeds, and that the bike's owner was weaving in and out of traffic well above the speed limit before the hard acceleration.
The bike hit the station wagon hard enough to knock the rear axle free of the car, and nearly split the station wagon in half. It was a four-lane highway, with two lanes each direction, and a turn lane. Who do you blame? The car would easily have completed to turn and cleared the way had the bike been going the legal speed (35 MPH on that road). The driver of the car stated that he'd seen oncoming traffic, well enough away to turn, but didn't see the bike at all.
Every "accident" has it's own facts, and of course many "accidents" are caused by reckless or careless bikers. I didn't mean to imply that bikers are never to blame, just that the "blame" angle in the OP caught my eye.
True enough.
Usually a lot more than 5
I would expect it would be at at the very least 10 mph over, depending on the circumstances...
If the speed limit is 25 mph and you are doing 35 mph, it is different than if it is 60 mph and you are doing 70 mph...but you know all that, just preaching to the choir here...
” Had the driver of the car lived he should have been charged with causing the death of the biker, plain and simple.”
The biker was a regular at the local watering hole. Most likely intoxicated and speeding.
Typical of a lot of bikers involved in fatal accidents.
” At the same time, driving way too fast is risky. few drivers have the skill or experience to notice “way too fast” vehicles as such,”
VERY TRUE!
Thank you for your colorful mail. To clarify, was that an invitation to have a gentlemanly discussion over a beer or a threat to beat the snot out of me?
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